No One Suspected Us: Prologue

It was a particularly beautiful day, sky gleaming vibrantly as it surrounded the blazing sun; air thriving with wind. It was all quite ironic really, the blue of the sky and our hair whipping around chapped faces. With how alive everything felt, it was easy to forget the world was dead.

Tap tap.

And just like that, the flourishing air that once lured me into a false sense of security is painfully ripped from my lungs, leaving me gasping through the crinkled tube that is my throat. I swallow in an attempt at remaining calm but it feels like eating broken glass. Suddenly, it courses through me; fear of now. Fear of what is to come.

My chest is beginning to heave as my mind twinkles with black dots, but I must hide it from them. They can't find out.

Bang! Bang bang!

Ignoring the whimpering beside me, I slip into the façade I’ve learned to adopt with ease. Despite the trepidation that is forcing me to grip my fingers just a little tighter than necessary, I hold steady. I can’t slip up. Not here, not now.

More banging and illiterate yelling follow soon after, clanging that slams against the window. The kind of noise that can only come from heavy metal hitting glass. My mind is fighting with the instinct to look up.

“You think this is a game? Wanna play a little cat and mouse?” the repulsive voice asks, the very tone seeping in utter sleaze, compelling me to squeeze my legs together until I feel the sides of my knees begin to numb. “I like games,” he states matter of factly, and in my peripheral vision, I can see him dragging his soiled bone-like finger down the cold glass.

My eyes eventually give in begrudgingly and land on his own. The flesh around them has begun to sag in downward arrows, slowly dragging him to hell one year at a time. Dark orbs of shit brown gaze through me, his flaky skin blotchy from years of being exposed to the sun. I suppose pillaging and murdering people is best done in the light of day when the terror you strike in your victims is almost painfully evident.

“I'll be the cat,” he informs me with glee, and his friend behind him laughs. As if this really is a game and someone will not be dying here this evening.

Yet, I keep my mouth closed. Self-preservation tells me I’m in no position to taunt, even if the words are sluggishly crawling up my tongue.

“Open up, little mouse!” he screams vehemently while waving his gun like it’s going to spray water instead of lead.

Without the weapon, he wouldn’t be too menacing. None of them would. Just three men in hoodies and red bandannas covering their mouth and nose who got their grubby hands on some old guns.

However, my hands are currently empty.

The organ in my chest has begun to actually pain me, the dull ache spreading like wild fire within the dry forest of my body. I’m desperately searching for my own weapon amongst this monstrosity of a car, yet each time I reach, all I find is more wrappers. Wrappers. Bottles. More wrappers. How anyone could consume so much junk is beyond me.

The childish whimper pulls me from my annoyed state, informing me once again of just how dire the situation is. Beside me, she’s sucking in all the air. “Oh god, we’re fucked,” she whispers with a crack in her usually gentle voice, covering her face with her hands.

The man beats harder on the window. “Open the door!” another one with a higher voice yells, his gun pointed directly at me. I look at him, then look down the barrel of his weapon. I can see the shaking in his hands, and suddenly I am more aware than not of what these men plan to do with us.

"You’re going to kill me no matter what I do," I tell him, and for a split second, the man seems to look at me like I’m not just something in the way of his wish to get inside this car. In that moment, he regards me as a human being. He must be new to his way of life.

But, then she begins pleading with tears streaming and her hands up in surrender, and the pride must have taken over him because I could see where the smirk made his eyes quirk up at the corners. That smirk that told me he wasn't going to spare us the torture he had in store.

“Just let them in, Nat!” she cries, pulling on the shoulder of my shirt. I look back at her, smile sadly, then reach out to touch her face. This might be the last time we see each other.

Her eyes close and I watch as she attempts a smile, but it can’t be anything besides a grimace. A tear slips from between her lids, gliding artfully down her cheek, like some god given salvation to my wild fire.

The pads of my fingers are so close, the dirt on her skin calling to me, and the world goes into a fast blur. There’s three horribly sonorous gunshots, and then the thud of something dense hitting hard surfaces.

It takes me a minute to get my bearings straight, but when I do, all I see is her. Literally, as she is blocking my vision.

“Nat!” she wails leaning over me. I hear her, I do, but I’m not really paying attention. I can feel my heartbeat finally slowing to a human pace.

She’s mostly on top of me now, tears slithering down her face and onto my shirt as she struggles to look out what’s left of the dirty window. She needs to see if they’re gone. Needs to look at the men I shot, who now lay with bullet wounds in each head, glass shattered all around them.

When she does, I know. Her breath stops for what feels like hours before starting up again in strong heaves, and her entire body is rigid as she slowly starts to back away from me.

She’s never seen me murder before.

I can tell she is having trouble with the reality of it all. The wheels are spinning in her head, but it’s as if they’ve encountered mud and are stuck slinging dirt but getting nowhere. Slowly, she manages to get out, “You killed them.”

Her breathing has become panicked, and I want to calm her down, but I know she’s frightened of me right now. She has made distance between us of more than the width of the car will allow, her back pressed against her passenger door as she eyes my gun. My trusty gun that has survived with me- no, let me survive, through all of this. Yet, when I look at it with pride, she watches distrustfully not even attempting to hide her scowl. If there was a pang in my heart because of it, I was now too numb to realize; the wild fire smoldering quietly in the ashes of the trees.

“This is the world we live in,” I remind her, releasing the lock and opening the door. “Men like this. They would have eaten us.”

She scoffs. “You don't know. Maybe they could have been helped!”

I had to stop her there. “No, you don't know. You've been sheltered and held up in that make believe fantasy land your father kept you in.” Flashes of companions I've had over the years flutter behind my eyes like something caught in the breeze. “Here, let me shatter those rose-colored glasses,” kneeling down, I reach into each man's pocket until I find what I already knew would be there. They are rotten, but still contrast well with the black leather of my gloves. “This is what happens when you contract it. There wasn't any saving that could have helped these guys except a bullet to the head.”

She stares down at the teeth in my hand. Her eyes widen with horror, and soon she's covering her mouth yet again. Rolling my eyes, I turn to leave, but her tender voice halts me. “Wait.” I hear her moving in the car, her hands brushing roughly across the beat up interior. Her kind fingers touch my shoulder, so I look back at her. She looks miserable.

“What?” I ask, and she responds. But not with her words. Instead, she pulls me down and, in that gentle way that only she can keep alive in this wasteland, she kisses me. It's warm and it's kind. Her hand slides to the back of my neck, and with her fingertips, she traces patterns. New lands are formed on my skin. Illustrations that nothing can compare to. Mountains standing strong and high with peeks that burst through the clouds and into the skyline of where my hair begins.

And although it is an impeccable feeling, I realize something is amiss. I don't want gentle, kind touches. These women and men that I surround myself with, sleep with, travel with- none of them are what I really need.

Then what do you need?

I need... I need...

That really begs the question, doesn’t it? The all-consuming question that one must ask themselves. But me?

I need help.

Pulling away, I can feel her sorrow coming back. I easily step over the bodies, putting my gun back in between my belt and my pants. Looking slyly over my shoulder, I see her watching me, still inside the car with a finger touching her lips. “This is where we go our separate ways, sweetheart.”

Her frightened shrieks and the sound of her yelping every time she missteps and touches a body leaves residue of a smirk on my lips as I go.

That night while trying to sleep, I feel the familiar pain of chipped fingernails digging into my shoulder. The ghost of those hands still haunts me, shaking me from my sleep with the appalling feeling of something invading my skin. I don’t remember the blood, but there are times when I dream it was everywhere, staining everything. Time’s when I look passed my invader to see a small child gazing down, and when I follow, I see that nothing on her body was safe from the splatter zone.

Then she’d look at me. Really look at me, like she expected something from me that I wouldn't give her.

And just like that, she was gone.

It never ended there, however. The bombs and the smoke followed. The things that no one expected to come, and that no one expected to survive. It kills me to not remember all of it. Knowing that something could flip my life around so quickly and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it is bad enough, but to not remember everything is simply the worst.

Yet, there are some things I have acquired from other mouths and I have been able to piece together with my own unclear memories. Of them all, I remember the whistling noises of the bombs the most, although I try to forget the shrieks that shadowed.

The blasts were spread out at first. Quick and simple. But, then it appeared as if the heat got turned up, and soon enough there wasn’t a second gone by where you couldn’t hear a blast. They tore through the air like bullets, leaving everyone hiding beneath the closest thing they could find. Friends clung to each other and covered their heads and the ones who didn’t have any people to rely on just dove down, hoping for the best. Then, there was the thing that followed, the savage mu- Wait.

I guess for this to be a good story I should tell you the beginning. How all of my nightmares commenced that one night in that tiny town in nowhere Alabama.